Any Traveller RPG (Mongoose version) fans here?

[Ed_Laprade]

I bought the mongoose traveller because I really enjoyed classic traveller back in the day. I've not had a chance to play it yet, but still enjoy the chargen 'minigame' !

I think they have improved it over the original wi more details to the background and a way to link together the pasts of the PC group.

Cheers

Same here. And I agree that its an improvement.

But man, those scores! And those career rolls! I wouldn't expect a character like that to last through the first session!

 

[qstor]

Yeah I love Traveller. I haven't played in a while. I was running a Mongoose Traveller campaign in 2008. I have most of the books and one of the CD ROMS from Marc Miller. Its an awesome game. I'm not a big fan of the TNE setting though. I hope Mongoose keeps publishing the books so the Hiver and the K'kree books come out.

Mike

 

[Bluenose]

I used that trilogy with a different system, but it was among the most epic set of adventures I ran. Loved the feel of them.

I've used Uraqyadn of the Seven Pillars (I bet that's spelt wrong!) with slight modifications in at least three different systems. FASA made such good adventures, and other material, for Traveller. And I still think come second to DGP, in terms of quality. I think Mongoose are pretty good, to be fair, at least on a par with GDW overall.

 

[nightwind1]

We're currently playing a Traveller RPG campaign - I believe it's called Secrets of the Ancients or something similar (I'm not running it).

My character, unfortunately, is somewhat sub-optimal.

STR: 2
DEX: 2
END: 4
INT: 11
EDU: 6
SOC: 3

At one point during character generation he actually failed to remain in the drifter career. He failed to be a failure and was forced - briefly - to be an intergalactic sports star instead. Although with those scores, I'm not sure how that worked out.

He does have one decent characteristic - INT - but that one decent characteristic is still less than that of the party 'tank' (for want of a better word) who has INT 12.

The low scores have created an interesting character. He has a rank of 6 in the Deception skill (that's pretty much all he's good at), so I'm playing him as a bitter, pathological liar in a wheelchair. It's actually working out rather well, though I'm pretty much pointless in combat! At first, I was incapable of making the basic roll to hit a target (which defaults at a DC of 8 on 2d6, and with my -3 for no skill in firearms and my -2 for my low DEX, the max I could roll was 7 - so there was no chance I could ever hit even a stationary target in combat).

Since then I have a big wheelchair-mounted gun which I have to remove every time we leave the ship because it appears to be illegal to carry firearms anywhere! So I haven't actually used it yet.

Anyway, all that aside. Do we have any other Traveller fans here?

To see how a guy in a wheelchair can be a great Traveller character, just watch "Alien:Resurrection".

The crew of the "Betty" is pretty much a Traveller crew anyway (or a proto-Firefly crew).

 

[scourger]

..."Alien:Resurrection"...crew of the "Betty" is pretty much a Traveller crew anyway (or a proto-Firefly crew).

Agreed. The crew of the Betty makes that movie much better.

As to the original question, I tried to love Mongoose Traveller for Judge Dredd's sake. The character creation system is cool, but I just didn't grok the rules engine itself.

 

[Water Bob]

Anyway, all that aside. Do we have any other Traveller fans here?

I'm a HUUUGGGEEEE Traveller fan. I ran a campaign that lasted five years in the 90's with a group of six players, playing every two weeks. Fun times.

I haven't taken a shine to Mongoose's version, though. I'm a Classic Traveller fan. I like the versitility and freedom of the CT task resolution rather than the stuffy, confined task system that Mongoose's version uses. And, that's ironic because the MGT task system is one that mirrors a task system I wrote and posted to the Citizens of the Imperium forum a few years before Mongoose Traveller was created.

I wrote if for use with Classic Traveller. The task system I called the UGM, or "Universal Game Mechanic". If you do a Google for it, you can still find a few web sites that use it. At the time, it was a fairly popluar task system for Traveller. I was suprised when I saw Mongoose Traveller using something that was almost exactly what I had written a few years earlier.

But, even though I wrote the UGM, I prefer the free-form style of Classic Traveller. I like how the GM can customize a task to the situation. I think that's better than one size fits all systems.

CT's flexibility, though, even went to skill checks. For example, a skill check using the Vacc Suit skill might give a +4 bonus per skill. Thus, a character would only need Vacc Suit-1 to be proficient in a wide range of Vacc Suit checks. Vacc Suit-2 would give a +8 bonus.

Other types of skill checks might give a +1 per two points of skill. And, of course, there's the standard 1 skill level equals a +1 modifier.

For example, let's say a character's got Engineering-2. For most Engineering tasks, he gets a +2 on his checks. But, then, let's say he's needed to fix something mechanical. He can use his Engineering skill, at +4 per skill level (+8 mod to this check), or another character can use their Mechancal-3 skill at the standard +1 per skill level. In this way, the dominance of the Enginnering skill is shown.

Maybe there's something in engineering that extremely hard to fix. You could say that the bonus is +1 per two points of Engineering skill.

CT also has checks where a minimum skill level is required, but no bonus is given after the minimum is supplied. The roll to rouse a person from Low Berth comes to mind. Medical-1 or better gives a +2 bonus on the throw. So, it doesn't matter if the character has Medical-1 or Medical-5, the bonus is still +2.

This is just one aspect of why I like CT better than all of the other editions. I could go into some more detail, about weapon selection and requirements and such (I like that too--your stats dictate which weapons you're best at using), but this post is getting long and probably digressing from your original intention.

But, yes, brother. I am a Traveller fan. A huge one.

 

[kitsune9]

I'm a big fan of Traveller in general. I like all editions and timelines of the period. I even enjoy the variants with the exception to T20. While I have it, it appealed to me the least; however, I'll play if it a group wants to do it.